Practitioners of sports worldwide typically all have a desire to improve their skills. The competitiveness is as charming as it is challenging and drives not only the common practitioner but also the elite athletes further in their abilities as time goes and equipment improves. Moreover, science has recently been more and more involved in the development of sports equipment both in execution of sports and in equipment development.
Golf is one sport in which recent substantial technical development has improved the game and the skills of the practitioners. For example, the development of golf clubs is supported by substantial finances, and the development has indeed improved the game. The interest in golf has increased over the past decades. It has in many countries become a common sport for people, and they play varying amounts of rounds each year. Golf is a sport of high skills where improvement lies in the details. A typical development of skills for a player is limited to the practice areas at a golf club, and also to classes given by professional instructors who also charge a fair amount for a class.
On the golf course, there exist some tools for guiding a player through-out a golf round. For example, there are devices having GPS supported maps indicating the present course outline including its obstacles. Another example is the iCaddy which guides the user as an electronic caddy which may suggest club choice and provide information for a user regarding the present golf course. However, these devices may not provide the user with satisfactory instructions for improving the skills of the player on the golf course.
US patent application 2012/0295739 presents a machine and method used to capture, analyze, score, archive, track and communicate real-time relevant golf data specific to individual golfers: 1) during practice/lessons; or 2) for every shot on every hole of an entire recreational golf round; and 3) archive all such practice sessions or rounds during which the invention is in use. The apparatus uses measurements from several sensors placed in e.g. the shoes, clubs, golf balls, and garments of the golfer. Further, it is described that the correct position during parts of the golf swing may be determined and stored from these several sensors. Red, yellow or green lights may be presented in smart glasses or the like for indicating to the golfer that he or she is or is not standing in a correct position before swinging a golf club, that the swing is or is not correct during backswing through the top of the backswing down to ball impact. The golfer may also be provided with a target line towards the target, e.g. the hole of the current golf course. In summary, the apparatus disclosed in US patent application 2012/0295739 is complex, expensive, and requires the user to invest in several components having sensors such as shoes, clubs, golf balls, and garments. Hence, the set-up of the apparatus is tedious and/or time-consuming as a user has to check whether their current shoes, clubs, golf balls or garment, are interoperable with the apparatus.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an improved device for providing a user with instructions for improving the skills of the player on the golf course in a cost-efficient way.